5 Jul

Blackmagic Design products rule

For the past month I have been working in my spare time at work on upgrading the brains of the City of Round Rock’s television channel.

A good chunk of the products I am using for the latest version are from Blackmagic Design. Boy, are they slick.

So far, I have been most impressed with the Smart VideoHub. It offers a lot of flexibility and power in 1RU and can be controlled from an iPad. This means that when it is time to go-live for a public meeting we will be able to do so remotely and with ease.

The OpenGear Converters are going to allow us to make the move to a HD channel as soon as Time Warner is ready to let us come into the 21st century. We can start producing content in HD and down convert it for cable at the last minute. Once HD becomes possible, it will be as simple removing the down-conversion.

I am excited to see the SmartView Duo in action, but it has yet to arrive. It looks like an awesome piece of equipment and coupled with the Smart VideoHub, monitoring will be a piece of cake.

Also, a big thanks to B&H for being so easy to work with. Their Texas government sales team is a dream.

I know this reads like a big ad, but sometimes it is worth it to talk about companies with great products and service. In all honesty, Blackmagic Design and B&H straight rule.

July 5, 2011 in: Commentary, Technology - No Comments

24 Jun

Mr Shifty Eyes

My Dog Steve Martin does the best shifty eyes.

June 24, 2011 in: Commentary - No Comments

13 Jun

MyRealPlate.com

Last week I wrote a blog post called “What my plate icon looks like.” For the post, I created a graphic that showed the foods I really eat.

Never one to leave a silly idea alone, I decided to develop MyRealPlate.com.

The idea was to satire the new MyPlate tool created by the USDA to replace the old Food Pyramid.

Anyone can now create a nice, high quality graphic of the foods they actually eat and download it to share with your friends.

June 13, 2011 in: Commentary - No Comments

11 Jun

Jumpstart the Facebook “Like” button

Today I was working on a new project that needed some very basic Facebook integration via the “Like” button. For hours, the Open Graph protocol meta information was not properly working for liking or sharing the page.

I found that if you test your page after entering the proper meta information using the Facebook URL Linter, your information will be indexed and immediately ready to go. If you need to make changes, run the URL Linter again and the info will be updated.

June 11, 2011 in: Technology - No Comments